Page 18 of Lady Dramatic
“The reserved marquess,” Roland answered. “I do not wish to frighten her off with the true me.”
“Until when? You cannot keep up the mask forever. Sooner or later, you’ll see something that sets you off. You’ll pass by a limping horse and think about your old pony and weep at the sight. If she does not understand your real temperament, she will presume you’ve gone insane.”
“Perhaps I can change, though. Perhaps I can be what I only act now.”
“People do not change who they are,” Quinn said. “In any case, I would not wish you to. You are a good man who cares for your fellow beings on this earth, and there is not a thing wrong with it.”
Roland did not suppose there was a thing wrong with it when it was described that way. It was another thing when his feelings entirely overtook him. He perfectly well knew what set him off. A person or animal powerless and being hurt—that set him off. He was relatively sure it all led back to his pony. He’d been riding Balthazar when he broke his leg by galloping right into a deep hole in a field. The horse had to be put down. His father had made him do it, he’d been forced to pull the trigger. The duke said that if a man were to own animals, that man must take responsibility for them right up to the end. Roland felt that to be true and he knew putting Balthazar out of his misery was a kindness. A horse could not survive on three legs, as much as he wished it were possible. That entire horrendous morning was burned into his memories. Anything at all remotely like it set him off.
He was not certain what to do about how he appeared to be the unfeeling marquess. Perhaps he could inch very slowly away from his alleged reserve but not all the way to who he really was. He might find a happy medium of some sort.
But not while Charles was sniffing around. He had to be got rid of first. Somehow.
*
Mrs. Right wasjust now engaged in a game of cat and mouse with Mr. Cremble. Or a game of ungodly housekeeper and pious butler, as the case was. She’d planted the idea that she mightbe in league with the devil and he’d been watching her carefully at every opportunity. Though she was tickled to pretend she did not see him peering round doorframes, she had, for some days, been stuck on what to do next. How did one confirm that one was in league with the devil? It was the sort of thing that did not come up in everyday conversation.
Then, as these butlers always seemed to do, he gave her a direction to follow. Cook had spied him slipping into the servants’ hall and affixing a small cross underneath the table at her place. Mr. Cremble meant to test her like their very own Spanish Inquisition! It was too convenient, really. His worst fears were about to be horrifyingly confirmed.
Some hours had passed and that time of day had arrived when all the servants would gather for tea. She noticed Mr. Cremble had hurried ahead of her, no doubt to be in place to view his test.
Mrs. Right took her time down the stairs. When she turned the corner into the servants’ hall, she would launch the performance of a lifetime.
She suddenly shielded her eyes. “Why is it so bright down here? Oh, it burns my eyes. I can come no closer.”
Mrs. Right heard the very recognizable sound of a chair scraping the stone floor. She peeked out between her fingers. Mr. Cremble had leapt from his place and was as white as the inside of a turnip.
Charlie, who was well aware of the game, looked around at the walls and said, “Mr. Cremble, you ain’t gone and hung a cross somewhere again?”
Mr. Cremble pointed a shaking finger at the table. “It’s underneath the table, out of view,” he whispered, “how did she know?”
“Stand back, Mrs. Right,” Charlie said, “I’ll handle it.”
She could see Charlie dive under the table and then come back up again with the offending cross. For good effect, she staggered back at that moment. She wished to give the impression that while she could not see it, she could feel it come closer.
“I’ll get rid of it, Mrs. Right,” Charlie said in a comfortable tone, as if he were chasing a fly out of the kitchens.
He put it under his livery coat and jogged past her. She fell back in a dramatic retreat.
Mr. Cremble cried, “Does nobody wonder about this?”
Cook, who’d been watching things unfold with his usual brand of equanimity, said, “We wonder about you, Mr. Cremble. If you know a cross hurts the lady’s eyes, why did you go and hide one for?”
“Whydoes it hurt her eyes, though?” Mr. Cremble cried. “It was under the table, it was not in view, how could it have hurt anybody’s eyes?”
Cook shrugged. “People got peculiarities, Mr. Cremble. It’s my opinion that a sensible man just works round ’em.”
“Works around a cross burning the housekeeper’s eyes?” Mr. Cremble whispered as if he’d never heard of such an idea. Which, Mrs. Right supposed, nobody ever had.
She pressed her lips tightly together and worked to look exhausted from her recent encounter with a cross.
Charlie had jogged up the stairs and was now well away. Mrs. Right dropped her hand from her eyes and smiled. “There now, that’s better. Well! Tea is on, is it?”
As Mrs. Right strolled to the table as if there were not a thing wrong, Mr. Cremble backed away from it. He turned on his heel and fled up the stairs. Mrs. Right presumed he would keep going all the way up to his quarters. He would take up his bible and search it for clues regarding what ought to be done to fight thedevil. She hoped he found some passage that said: “Get out of the house, Mr. Cremble.”
The only hole in her plan was that it must not go on for too long a time. She must get Mr. Cremble out of the house before he wrote to his relation, the duke’s vicar in the Dales, about his current circumstances. It would all fall apart when the vicar wrote back that Mrs. Right was a regular attendee at church, had never complained about her eyes burning, and was in the habit of wearing a small gold cross under her fichu that she often mentioned as having been given to her by her parents. He might also mention that her father had not died falling off a cart, and her mother had not died of fever. That vicar knew too much about her!
There must be the final push to get Mr. Cremble out the door, though she did not yet know what that would be.
